Ok for the past few nights I have been trying to induce SP for LDs. So when I go to bed, I lay on my back and stay perfectly still. After a few minutes I get a sensation of "free-falling". At this point, I always think "Yes, It's working! I'll be in a lucid dream soon!" After I think this, the feeling always goes away, and I feel like I'm right back where I started. Why is this happening? Also, I read that it helps to regulate your breathing while inducing SP, so how would I go about doing that? Thanks

I think that is called the hypnagogic state. It's a good way to enter a lucid dream. In fact i have just finished doing a hypnagogic meditation. The reason you get right back where you started is because of the 'WOW' factor moment...your excitement wakes you back into full body consciousness. It is important that you learn to go with any feelings and sensations you have and do not judge them...just allow...allow...allow. This just literally happened to me...I had some ringing in my ears, heaviness on my chest, then some images, and my naughty mind decided to acknowledge their arrival with too much awareness! So the only way to gain this balance is to practice, and practice, and practice!

Oh and quick p.s. edit. Re regulating breathing. Inbreath of 3 or 4 seconds, followed by outbreath of 3 or 4 seconds. Just focus on nothing else but this equal breath sequence. Do this for a little while before sinking back into a normal breathing pattern. If you start to fall asleep resume the regulated breathing for a few moments then back into natural breath pattern.

Inducing sleep paralysis is not something that is necessary for lucid dreaming nor is sleep paralysis a stage you must pass through in order to lucid dream. There are a lot of good methods for lucid dreaming on this site and others that you can follow. SP really doesn't have anything to do with any of them so I would put it our of your mind.

Last edited by lucidinthe sky on 01 Jan 2014 05:05, edited 2 times in total.

Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world and the real world? Morpheus